The Return of the TG

its been a frustrating few weeks of rain with only a couple of practices possible.

So when Stanford Firestorm offered a scrimmage on the turf at Mayfield we accepted in nanoseconds.

There's been so much rain that there were even pools on this new turf field and it made for some interesting moments when the ball got stuck in them.

TG has not played a scrimmage for a while. Its been pretty intense soccer all Fall and Winter and we took max opportunity to get everyone in the game.

Firestorm are a decent team with some good skills but from the opening exchanges, it did look like they would struggle with the power and pace of TG. Olivia and Ysa switched from their usual roles with Olivia on the last defender and Ysa dropping deep to receive the ball. This worked very well and Ysa played Olivia through on goal twice in the opening 10 minutes, but the very good Firestorm keeper kept the score at 0-0. Alexia and Celine took on the wide midfield roles for the first half and played at their best, supporting the offence and defence as needed. Carrie and Yovanna owned the defensive middle and snuffed out any threats from the girls in red. TG took a 1-0 lead when Ysa received a ball in the Firestorm box and fired her shot high into the net. For the end of the 1st half Jeska and Cali played at forward with Ysa and Olivia taking a break. This made for a very different passage of soccer. Jes and Cali passed the ball between each other more than our usual sprint team and were also a lot more physical, causing Firestorm to lose the ball in defence more often. Also, the slower pace of the attacks at this stage brought our midfield players into attacking positions.

At the start of the second half TG went out with one of our fave line ups 3-4-3. A goal followed quickly from a short corner worked by Adi and Tess, resulting in the ball at Ysa's feet on the penalty spot.... 2-0. Then Firestorm pulled a goal back. The TG defence were so far into the Firestorm half that a clearance found two red attackers on the half way line with a 10 yard head start. Carrie nearly caught up but couldn't prevent the score moving to 2-1. TG were then under pressure for about 10 minutes until they pulled their socks back up and fired in two quality goals interspersed amongst many shots that missed, one from Olivia smashed against the post. Yovanna scored a goal of real quality, bursting through 3 challenges before hitting an unstoppable shot. Yoyo also got an assist on the 4th goal.... can't remember who scored it. Game done, some quality soccer today including Yoshi's patented reverse step-over and Carrie and Adi working the ball out of defence with short passes.

I spoke with the Firestorm coaches, they wanted to know which league we were in for spring, presumably so that they could choose a different one.